Most people in Sri Lanka are not aware of a prize equivalent to the Nobel Prize. But if you are a person from the field of architecture you will definitely know about the Pritzker Prize which is regarded as the Nobel Prize for architecture.
In other words, it is to architecture what the Nobel Prize is to literature. Two weeks ago, the 2022 Pritzker Prize winner was announced, and it was awarded to Diébédo Francis Kéré, 56-year-old architect from Burkina Faso.
Fifty-first winner
It was the 44th Pritzker Prize ceremony, and was held at the Great Hall of the newly opened Marshall Building, The London School of Economics and Political Science in London designed by Grafton Architects, led by Farrell and McNamara.
 Diébédo Francis Kéré |
Diébédo Francis Kéré is the 51st winner of the award founded in 1979, succeeding Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, according to the announcement by Tom Pritzker, Chairman of The Hyatt Foundation which supports the award.
“Through buildings that demonstrate beauty, modesty, boldness, and invention, and by the integrity of his architecture and geste, Kéré gracefully upholds the mission of this Prize,” said the official statement of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
“A poetic expression of light is consistent throughout Kéré’s works. Rays of sun filter into buildings, courtyards, and intermediary spaces overcoming harsh midday conditions to offer places of serenity or gathering”, it added.
With the prize, Francis Kéré received $100,000 and a bronze medal. He is now included in the same echelon as past Pritzker winners: Philip Johnson, James Stirling, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Oscar Niemeyer, I.M. Pei, Norman Foster, and Tadao Ando.
Difference
The Pritzker has, generally, been awarded to familiar celebrity “starchitects,” but in recent years, the jury's attention refocused on lesser-known practices around the world, socially conscious firms championing design as a catalyst for the greater good.
With the selection of Francis Kéré, the Pritzker committee continues to embrace that mission, with newfound attention to sustainability, both in terms of environment and community. Kéré employs large numbers of Burkinabé citizens (in 2020, his country ranked 20th in the world for the lowest GDP per capita) with jobs in carpentry, welding, brick making, masonry, and painting, ensuring that the local community benefits as much from his projects as visitors do.
Emergence
Diébédo Francis Kéré was born in 1965 in Gando, Burkina Faso as the eldest son of the village chief where he grew up with no electricity or access to clean drinking water. When he began schooling he was the only child in his family and community to attend school. In fact, the architect’s first sense of architecture stemmed from his childhood classroom because it lacked necessary ventilation and light. His little illuminated space in the house where his grandmother sat and told stories to him also ignited his architectural sensibility.
Twenty years later, Kéré moved to Germany and studied at the Technical University of Berlin where he graduated in 2004 with a degree in architecture. After completing the education, he could’ve easily done what so many architects before him had: remained in Europe to focus on skyscrapers, museums, and other lucrative civic buildings. But Kéré returned to Burkina Faso and flourished by providing his community with much-needed infrastructure.
Vision
Diébédo Francis Kéré always had a broad vision. As he himself had experienced the poor architectural conditions in his hometown, he had vowed to one day make schools better in extreme climates, allowing for “true teaching, learning, and excitement”.
In 1998, he set up the Kéré Foundation to fundraise and advocate for a child’s right to a comfortable classroom. The first project under it was Gando Primary School in 2001, which was built by locals crafting every part of the establishment by hand, guided by the architect’s “inventive forms of indigenous materials and modern engineering”.
This project saw him receive the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004, and led to the inception of his own practice Kéré Architecture, in Burkina Faso as well as in Berlin, in 2005. Following this success, other primary, secondary, postsecondary, and medical facilities followed throughout Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mozambique, and Uganda.
“I hope to change the paradigm, push people to dream and undergo risk. It is not because you are rich that you should waste material. It is not because you are poor that you should not try to create quality. Everyone deserves quality, everyone deserves luxury, and everyone deserves comfort. We are interlinked and concerns in climate, democracy, and scarcity are concerns for us all,” Francis Kéré said.
Now he is equally present in Burkina Faso and Germany, professionally and personally, and praised “for the gifts he has created through his work, gifts that go beyond the realm of the architecture discipline.”
Kéré's works
Other than schools and medical facilities, Kéré’s work in Africa includes, in progress, two historic parliament buildings, the National Assembly of Burkina Faso and Benin National Assembly, as well as the TStartup Lions Campus (Turkana, Kenya), an information and communication technologies campus, and the Burkina Institute of Technology composed of cooling clay walls.
Francis Kéré's architectural expression is deeply rooted in his upbringing and experiences in Gando. So he communicated to the world West African tradition, especially the practice of “communing under a sacred tree to exchange ideas, narrate stories, celebrate and assemble”.
In fact, for the 2017 Serpentine Pavilion in London, the architect imagined a structure that takes its shape from a tree, with a detached roof and disconnected yet curved walls formed by triangular indigo modules, the color representing strength in his culture and more personally, a blue boubou garment worn by the architect as a child. Inside the pavilion, rainwater is funneled into the center, highlighting water scarcity that is experienced worldwide.
According to the Archdaily web site, his built works also include structures in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some of his significant works are Xylem at Tippet Rise Art Centre (Montana, United States), Léo Doctors’ Housing (Burkina Faso), Lycée Schorge Secondary School (Burkina Faso), the National Park of Mali and Opera Village (Burkina Faso).
Prestige
Diébédo Francis Kéré is now working as a visiting professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Yale School of Architecture. He holds the inaugural Chair of Architectural Design and Participation professorship at the Technische Universität München (Germany) since 2017. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (2018) and the American Institute of Architects (2012) and a chartered member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (2009).
Other awards that he won include the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine’s Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2009), BSI Swiss Architectural Award (2010); the Global Holcim Awards Gold (2012, Switzerland), Schelling Architecture Award (2014); Arnold W Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts & Letters (2017); and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture (2021).
Diébédo Francis Kéré is the first African-born architect to win the Pritzker Prize.